Little Raven wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 2:44 pm
Grifman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2020 2:04 pmSo what will the Republican Party do? What does their future hold?
As you say, there are basically two routes available for the Republicans.
- Move back towards the traditional political center. This means ditching the alt-Right, going back to Wall Street with hat in hand, and trying to convince everyone that Trump was an aberration that will not be repeated. Hardly impossible, but not easy, either. There's been a lot of talk about how both parties have moved to the right over the last 3 decades. That's because both parties have, and frankly, the Democratic party has now spread over a whole lot of the bench where Republicans used to rest. Pushing the Democrats OUT of that space might not be easy.
I agree with most of this but disagree that both parties moved to the right. Instead the Democratic party has stretched to the middle and also has stretched to the left.
The NY Times reported on an analysis that had the Democratic party aligned almost with UK Labour in 2019. They incorporated elements of Bernie's coalition since this and probably are even closer to UK Labour. In any case, this stretch has left them with a fragile and potentially weak coalition. Oddly enough I think there may be a paradox politically in a big Biden victory. The Democrats many have *too much* political capital. Everyone is going to want a piece of it. The in-fighting might become fierce.
Even in a narrow victory Biden is going to have to walk a tightrope managing that coalition. And depending on how that goes the Republicans may not even have a seat at the table. Especially if they decide to procedurally slow down the Senate or filibuster too much. The Democrats might be forced to deal with it and the in-fighting in the Democratic caucus around appropriate responses will be divisive. They face the same problem with the Supreme Court discussion. And it'll be inter-generational for extra fun.
This of course all assumes the Democrats take the Senate and the WH. If they don't well the math changes significantly. The Democratic coalition problem will still be there but the Republicans will fall back to fighting in insurgent warfare mode in the Senate and governance levels will continue to decline. They'll bide their time. All very thorny issues. And I agree the Republicans have little chance re-occupying the center territory. The gap between centrist Ds and even the most centrist R is fairly large and the Senate is lousy with tea party Republicans. McConnell might not be able to pipe line judges but they'll be investigating, investigating, investigating all day/all night and the media will be right along cheering on the chaos.
Run off the cliff. This doesn't actually mean "move more the right" because honestly, there's nowhere else to go. So instead, think of this as "throwing the board into the air and seeing where all the pieces land." In this scenario, the Democrats actually become "the conservative party," in the sense that they will be fighting to conserve the current order, while the Republicans will transform into a party of radical reactionaries who want to burn it all down and start anew. [/list]
In normal times, the latter scenario would be all but unthinkable, but these are not normal times, and there's plenty of precedent for this sort of party realignment.
This is where I have more disagreement. The GOP is already here. Again looking at the analysis from 2019. They've been insurgent and radical for years. Their party platform is to the right of almost every right-wing party in the Europe. And they have ~40% support with Trump at the helm. That is enough support to cause trouble. They'll either dissipate slowly over time, some centrists will split off and become the new republicans perhaps, or they'll explode. It's all very unpredictable.
In the end, the next 3 months may make every guess above wrong. We are heading towards a space with many, many variables all dependent on each other.